SEC Football Q&A: With so Much Turnover, Who's the Early 2016 SEC East Favorite?
Ahh, offseason.
The glorious time of year when every team is a lock to win its division, your favorite player is a lock to be finalist for the Heisman Trophy and everybody else's coach is squarely on the hot seat.
Yes, it's that time of year.
.jpg?w=256 "Ohio State Team Doctor")
With so much turnover in the SEC East that includes three new head coaches and Florida's unstable quarterback situation, who should be considered the favorite? What should have happened with South Carolina's coaching vacancy?
Those questions and more are answered in this edition of SEC football Q&A.
In 2016, the SEC East will be wide open.
Georgia has a new coach and has major quarterback issues. That same story can be repeated at Missouri and South Carolina, both of which also have a talent gap when compared to the big boys of the SEC.
Defending SEC East champion Florida has the track record of success, but quarterback Will Grier will be suspended for the first six games of the season as he finishes off his yearlong suspension for violating the NCAA's policy on performance-enhancing drugs. If and when he comes back, there's no guarantee that the job will be his.
Because of all of those issues, why not Tennessee?
I know, I was either driving the Vols bandwagon or riding shotgun last offseason, but the division is wide open for a team that should return a terrorizing backfield in Jalen Hurd and Alvin Kamara, a talented wide receiving corps, a veteran quarterback in Joshua Dobbs and an experienced front seven that has had success on third down in each of the last two seasons.
What's more, the Vols get Florida at home during Grier's suspension (Week 4) and get Georgia on the heels of back-to-back SEC road trips by the Bulldogs.
Are the Vols going to contend for a playoff spot? Probably not.
But it sets up well for head coach Butch Jones—provided he can remember how to close out games and not coach scared—to make a run to the first SEC Championship Game for the program since 2007.
As of Tuesday morning, Auburn was favored by three points over Memphis in the Birmingham Bowl according to OddsShark.com.
The only thing I can think of is that oddsmakers are giving Auburn a home-field advantage bump since the game is a couple hours up the road at Legion Field.
On paper, there really isn't much of a reason to like head coach Gus Malzahn's crew in this game.
Auburn's pass defense is 12th in the SEC (232.2 yards per game), has given up 112 passing plays of 10 or more yards (11th in the conference) and is tied for last in the SEC with just 17 sacks.
And this is the group that's going to shut down Memphis quarterback Paxton Lynch and the Tigers offense that's averaging 324.3 yards per game through the air (13th nationally) and 149 passing plays of 10 or more yards (14th nationally)?
Nope.
Memphis will force Auburn into a shootout, and there's nothing to suggest that either quarterback Jeremy Johnson or Sean White can match Lynch drive for drive.
This is a matchup nightmare for Malzahn. Auburn's best chance is pounding the rock with Jovon Robinson and Peyton Barber, but as we saw down the stretch during the regular season, the running game mysteriously disappeared at key times.
Absolutely not, especially since all signs point toward Ole Miss quarterback Chad Kelly and Tennessee quarterback Joshua Dobbs coming back for their senior seasons.
On top of that, Kyle Allen has a chance to solidify the top spot on Texas A&M's depth chart this offseason. If he doesn't, dual-threat Kyler Murray has the experience of his true freshman season to fall back on.
Around the SEC, there are still players who are talented and either got time in mop-up situations or redshirted—like Alabama's Blake Barnett—in the hopes of winning jobs occupied by veterans.
While 5-star Georgia commit Jacob Eason has enormous potential and could play right away whether he keeps his commitment to new Bulldogs head coach Kirby Smart or flips to Jim McElwain and the Florida Gators, let's hold off on anointing him one of the nation's best right out of the gate.
The Josh Rosens of the world—true freshman quarterbacks who come in and become stars right away—are few and far between. Even Rosen, who completed 59.5 percent of his passes and tossed 20 touchdowns in 2015 for UCLA, threw nine picks and looked lost and blinded by the speed of the game at times.
If Eason is in a spot to play right away, the path will be similar.
Eason has all of the potential to be a star, but no, he won't be the SEC's best quarterback in 2016.
"@BarrettSallee who do you think SC should have hired instead?
— Darrin McCaskill (@dbmccaskill) December 7, 2015"
As stated in my story on South Carolina's hiring of Will Muschamp in the tweet above, making Arizona head coach Rich Rodriguez the backup to Muschamp makes about as much sense as the College Football Playoff commercial where the actors are singing about watching football on New Year's even without televisions in the room to watch the games on.
Rodriguez made Arizona nationally relevant in 2014, won the Pac-12 South and came within one game of a BCS National Championship Game berth with West Virginia in 2007. He's a successful, offensive-minded coach who would thrive in a division that has gone defensive-heavy with its coaching hires over the last few years.
If he did, in fact, turn down the job, a guy like Lincoln Riley would have been wonderful for the Gamecocks based on the Oklahoma offensive coordinator's air raid resume with the power twist he learned this year with the Sooners.
Sure, guys like Justin Fuente and Tom Herman would have been great as well, but clearly athletics director Ray Tanner was never really in the fight for either.
South Carolina should have gone offensive, made the program different than the rest of the division and established a new, offensive identity.
Quotes were obtained firsthand unless otherwise noted. Statistics are courtesy of cfbstats.com.
Barrett Sallee is the lead SEC college football writer and national college football video analyst for Bleacher Report as well as a host on Bleacher Report Radio on SiriusXM 83. Follow Barrett on Twitter @BarrettSallee.
.jpg?w=480 "Ohio State Team Doctor")
